Raven Zucchini

(48 days) F-1 hybrid. Our best-selling zucchini for market growers. Raven sets the standard for dark zucchini. Its smooth-skinned glossy shapely greeny-black fruits make it the “prettiest of all zucchini, plant and fruit alike” to Anne Elder. Its merits go more than skin deep as research by Dr. John Navazio showed that Raven’s dark pigmentation contains more of the antioxidant lutein than lighter-skinned varieties. Relatively early concentrated production so market growers can make succession plantings. Performs well even in poor squash years. ⑥

Additional Information

Zucchini

160–240 seeds/oz. ⅛ oz packet sows 4–6 hills; 1 oz, 40 hills. The term zucchini, which means ‘little squash’ in Italian, was not in common parlance until the late ’30s. Squash expert Amy Goldman, author of The Compleat Squash, traces the first true zucchini to 1901 in Milan, but vegetable marrows and cocozelles, now called zucchini, are considerably older.

Summer Squash

Cucurbita pepo

Culture: Tender, will not survive frost. Sow in hills 4' apart, 5 seeds/hill. Thin to 2–3 best plants. Floating row covers, especially when used in low tunnels, provide extra heat and can hasten maturity by 1 to 2 weeks. Male blossoms typically precede females by about a week. Females have a bulge at the base of the blossom, an early stage of the fruit forming. In early summer, a combination of cool, cloudy weather and declining bee populations may result in poor pollination causing low yields. Mites and colony collapse disorder have wiped out a high percentage of wild and domesticated honeybee colonies in the last 20 years, creating a real crisis for cucurbit growers. Don’t leave oversized squash on the vines. It shuts down production. Make succession plantings to ensure harvest through the entire frost-free season, insurance against powdery mildew and other diseases tiring old plants. Minimum germination temperature 60°, optimal temperature range 70–90°, optimal temperature 85°. Days to maturity are from direct seeding.

Taste: Unless you want to stuff them, for best flavor pick squash when they are small. Squash blossoms are a delicacy. Harvest male blossoms when fully open for salads or stuffing.Pests & Diseases: To combat squash bugs without using pyrethrum or neem: Protect young plants with row covers. Striped cucumber beetles and squash bugs overwinter in squash residues so burn or haul these away at season’s end rather than cold composting them. By hand-picking them in June and July, I reduced an endemic problem and almost completely eliminated squash bug damage.

Pest: Squash BugCultural controls: rotation, till in cucurbit debris before winter and plant a cover crop, boards on soil surface near squash will attract bugs overnight which can be killed, avoid mulching. Squash bugs lay their brown-brick red egg clusters on the underside of the foliage, often next to the central vein—destroy egg clusters on undersides of leaves.Materials: Pyrethrum on young nymphs, AzaMax.